Sponsored by Somebody: Thrasher's Wheat Goes Corporate Whore

If I was a junkman selling you cars
washing your windows and shining your stars

OMG, TW goes corporate whore by taking ads?!?!

OK, so that was pretty dramatic.

As you can see above, Thrasher's Wheat's Neil Young News page has begun to run an advertisement. No longer sponsored by nobody, this blog is hopefully still for you.

And let's be clear here. To say we've agonized over this for literally years would be an understatement. First, we tried those Amazon links. That worked a little bit. Then we tried reader supported donations. That worked a little bit more.

But still traffic continues to surge, costs continue to rise for data storage and bandwidth fees. Here's a graphic of traffic trends just since the start of the year.



Since just January 2009, we've had the Canada-US Tour, Linc-Volt, and Fork in the Road. Now with what looks to be the imminent release of The Holy Grail Archives boxset and another European tour, we're bracing for another traffic surge.

We realize that a lot of readers know that this is pretty much a side hobby that we continue to gladly subsidize out of our own pockets.

However, as the global economy continues to nosedive, Amazon purchases and donations have dwindled from a pretty tepid level to virtually non-existent outside of a handful of loyal supporters. It appears that even Neil Young fans aren't purchasing Neil CD's, books, etc. judging by what we see in our Amazon Neil Young Store.

Even our contest to win an Uncut Magazine preview issue of Neil Young's Archives barely covered the costs of the issue and postage?!

Our hopes of having sufficient funds to do a server upgrade and replace our publishing software seem to be a lost cause.



Look at our server load (red is very bad).

Oh, what to do?

We have no book to sell. We have no merchandise to hawk.

Some have suggested using our TW logo on t-shirts and coffee cups. We shudder at the thought. But if someone wants to make a business case for us it might be something to consider.

Of course, we prefer to stay solely reader supported, for a number of reasons.

Awhile back, we posed the question to you -- the reader, the Neil fan -- what if we ran ads on Thrasher's Wheat. Somewhat surprisingly, it seemed to be OK with folks. Afterall, rust@yahoo is plastered with ads.

We've been in discussions with the site mog.com for sometime about running ads. MOG is a music blog, plain & simple. The editor Michael Goldberg and Thrasher go way back to the days of the defunct Addicted to Noise which made pioneering attempts to be an internet music magazine back in the web infancy of the mid-90's. So Michael's a internet music pioneer and if anyone is going to crack this, we may as well go along for the ride.

Afterall, newsprint in newspaper and magazines are dying fast. Virtually by the day. Will those ad dollars shift to the 'net? Who knows?

So if we were ever going to do this, MOG seemed like a good partner to go with. Not to get into all the messy details of web advertising, but essentially what we've done is joined an ad network. So the good news is that we don't have to mess with the advertisers and rates directly. The bad news is that we have no control over what will appear up there. Although we've been promised it won't be those ridiculous flash ads.

So you help TW by clicking thru the ads and we get a teeny tiny fraction of a penny every time you click.

As we mentioned, this was a difficult decision. One upside is that maybe we won't have to run our little fundraisers from time to time which come across as begging to us and we find quite distasteful.

Almost lastly, we'll say thank you so much to those who have so generously supported us with donations and Amazon purchases. You've helped us to take TW to this level. We hope this change in course doesn't make you feel that we've caved on our principles and understand we're dealing with -- while not exactly survival issues -- managing to stay afloat.

But most importantly, all the contributors of links, reviews, photos, videos, and stories. These are the heart and soul of TW.

We'll promise you that the editorial content of this blog is not going to be influenced by the ads, needless to say.

Incidentally, (if you're still reading and give a shit), there was a lot of debate about an ad in the sidebar vs the header. Our preference was in the side but couldn't make work right with sizing, etc. We really didn't like the header but it was the only way to go.

In the meantime, click thru to MOG on the ad above. That way they'll know we're linked into their network.

In cyberspace, every click is a vote. Your economic power and what you do with it is your most powerful weapon in taking on the system.

While not exactly clicking for Neil, it might be as close as we get.

This is cliche as hell, but keep on clickin' in the free world! (Sorry Neil)

ps - We figure that if hell is scheduled to freeze over on June 2, what the heck.

pss - We still encourage folks to make a contribution or an Amazon purchase as it is highly uncertain as to how this will work out and it will take quite a bit of time before we see any funds whatsoever.

Singin' for Pepsi
Singin' for Coke
Makes me feel like a joke
This blog's for you!

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